


i worry, i worry, i worry.

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, the other characters are rose dave john and jake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8167214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jade Harley's job is to protect.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is a short, gross fic i wrote about coping (kinda) back in may. i reread it and thought it wasn't awful. read if you want, and tell me if any warnings should be added. thank you and i hope you enjoy.

    Jade Harley’s purpose is to protect them.

    Even the mere thought is like whiplash—she failed to protect them during the game, how could she do it now? She let it all happen, let John die, let herself kill Dave, let Rose go grimdark. She knows she could have prevented it, but she didn’t. Present Jade, survivor Jade has to be stronger than past Jade. Past Jade let it happen. Present Jade won’t.

    Jade knows they’re all still here  _ (John, Rose, Dave) _ , knows they’re alive  _ (Karkat, Kanaya, Terezi) _ , but that doesn’t stop the nightmares she wakes up from. It didn’t stop the nightmares back on the battleship, and it doesn’t stop them now. It doesn’t stop her from waking up, quivering, afraid,  _ weak _ . It doesn’t stop her from feeling every shred of doubt and anxiety that overcame her back on that dreaded island from coming back, bigger than ever.

    Jade comes to realize she doesn’t need sleep.

    She supposes this may be a side effect of conditional immortality, the lack of necessity to sleep. The urge is still there, expressed by the way she has to combat weariness, but the necessity is gone. Jade slept through the first thirteen years of her life. She’s done sleeping.

    Without sleep, the nightmares are reduced to fears and images that fester in the back of her head, the echo of some long-faded painting. They only brave coming forward every few days, and that’s alright. 

    At least, she thinks it’s every few days. Time is different, now. She could ask Dave. He’d know. He always had a way with time, even before the game. She did, too. Now that’s gone. Now she’s space, and space is to be isolated. Alone. Solitary.

    Jade takes to adoring her God Tier clothing and exploring the universe they created. It’s big. The stars shine differently, and they come in all sorts of colors that are visible even from this strange version of Earth. She sees planets, large and small, vibrant and dull. She doesn’t visit them. Jade doesn’t know if this is because she doesn’t want to or because she’s afraid. She convinced herself it’s the former, because being afraid is being weak, and she cannot afford to be weak anymore.

    Occasionally, she encounters beasts. She doesn’t know what they are. Maybe they’re parts of this universe, maybe they came via the game. It doesn’t matter. Jade beats them, one by one, and the cuts and scrapes and slashes they leave across her legs and arms and torso barely sting when she thinks of other things. The blood should seep into the clothes, but it doesn’t. Sometimes, if the gash is fresh enough, it bleeds through, and she can ghost her fingertips on the red pooling through her sleeves. The blood vanishes, though, never stains. And the wounds heal, quicker than they normally would. A bonus.

    She stops visiting her room on their copy of Earth as frequently as she’d like. It remains untouched until she can return, collapse into the soft bedsheets, and try not to turn into a pile of sobs and tears because that’s selfish, and she can’t afford to be selfish. She leaves before anyone can catch her, but sometimes people do.

    One time, it’s Rose, the sun embodied, who looks at Jade with lips pressed tight and knitted brows. She doesn’t know what that expression means. She asks Rose, and Rose just lets out a deep, heavy breath (a sigh, she thinks it’s called, because that’s what Nannasprite told her on the ship), pulls her in, and wraps her arms around Jade’s shoulders. That was a hug. She struggles to find the name at the time, but she’d done it to John before entering the new universe, and then she did it to Rose. They hold each other like that for a moment, then Rose pulls away, looks to Jade with some kind of glint in her eyes, and disappears out the door.

    The next time, it’s Jake. Jake tells her he’d made a habit of heading to her house every night, even though she wasn’t normally there, because,  _ hell _ , he just wants to talk to someone. He doesn’t hug her. He talks, in a loud voice that reverberates off the walls, and makes facial expressions Jade can’t place. Then he leaves, that same kind of feeling in his eyes that Rose had had, and Jade thinks she knows what it means.  _ Pity _ .

    After that, when Jake stops turning up, it’s Dave. Dave doesn’t talk to her. He doesn’t hug her, doesn’t turn the corners of his lips up or down, just sits down outside her house and stares at what they knew to be the night sky. It is silence, but Jade doesn’t know if it is the good kind or the bad kind. When Dave leaves, he’s wearing those shades, but she doesn’t think he pities her.

    She tries to avoid the others altogether after the next time. It is John, telling her how everyone missed her, and how she should come hang out with them again. Jade shakes her head, but he persists, and when the dreaded date comes that she obligates to see them, she panics. She runs. She hides.

     She’s too afraid to face the ones who used to call her a friend, and now she’s too weak, as well.

    So she takes to fighting the monsters in the universe. They don’t pity her. They don’t think her weak, especially as she strikes them down. They’re beasts, incapable of emotion, and, in a way, she thinks she becomes one.

    Then Jade reminds herself she’s not anything like them. They’re scavengers. She’s a guardian. She’s there to protect the world they created with her dying breath. Her job is to protect, and that’s what she does.

    Jade doesn’t know when she returns next. It’s night, and there’s no one at her house, so she sits under the tree she, Dave, and Karkat picnicked (what an odd word, she thinks) beside, and tries to relax. Then she remembers that, to her, relaxation means sleep, and she wouldn’t—couldn’t—sleep. Not yet.

    Jade leans against the tree, staring up at the stars and imagining what dangers were brewing that she’d deal with.  _ Deal with. _

    She pulls her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them, tracing patterns in the dirt with a finger. It feels different from the island, but she can’t quite place how. She’s trying not to reminisce about times before she ruined everything when there’s a presence beside her.

    Out of the corner of her eye, Jade can see a green glow, and then it’s an orange glow, then she looks over to see Davepetasprite. The ends of their lips are curved sharply upward, barely revealing teeth, and they seem to be staring at her. She struggles to produce a word for the expression, but she’s come to associate it with joy. “Hey,” she murmurs, and the word feels foreign and heavy in her mouth

    “Harley,” they reply, still making that expression, bringing a hand to their forehead and then pulling it away sharply. She has no clue what that means, but assumes it’s a greeting so she tries to do the smile thing. Hopefully that would be close enough. She knew how to do it, she _ did _ , but living alone on an island for years may have impaired her ability. “Lovely.”

    “Thanks,” she replies, failing to note the odd tone in their voice. They give her an equally odd look, complete with a head tilt and everything. She doesn’t know what they’re expecting. “I’m glad to see you made it to the new universe,” Jade says, trying to increase the pitch of her voice. That was supposed to sound genuine. She knew that. Instead, however, her voice just squeaked.

    “Really?” Davepetasprite hums, tapping their fingers against the ground. “Even after I stabbed you?”

    Jade blinks, surprised. Davepetasprite doesn’t seem to pick up on that, glasses staring her directly in the eyes. “You were just trying to wake me up. Why would I not want to see that you’re okay after that?” She means it as a question, she really does, but the words sound flat against Davepetasprite’s.

    “It’s okay, Jade. I meant it as a joke.” They shouldn’t need to clarify. She should know this. “I’m glad to see you’re okay, too, Jade. I wasn’t worried, though, because you’re really brave and capable and I knew you’d do it.” Brave and capable.  _ Brave and capable _ . That’s how she wants to be remembered. 

    “Thanks,” she says, and it feels useless, everything does, but they seem to know what she wants to say. “I… really appreciate that.” She swallows, instinctively looking to the ground.

    They place a hand on Jade’s shoulder, and she doesn’t know what that means but it feels nice so she lets it be. “Jade,” Davepetasprite whispers, and she looks up, unsure if they were just saying her name or wanted her attention. “Jade, everyone’s worried.” At her blank expression (blank? How is one’s expression blank? They get the meaning behind it anyway), they continue, “About you, I mean. I-”

    “No one needs to be worried about me.” Jade picks at the grass, but doesn’t tear any up. “I’m okay.”

     “Okay.” They don’t press further. “By the way—Jade, if you ever wanna talk about something, you’re free to come to me! I really do care about you. Everyone does. That sounds hard to believe, probably, but we do. And I want to make sure you’re okay, y’know?” She  _ does _ know. She doesn’t speak. Her throat burns and she feels like she may cry. She  _ doesn’t _ know why that is. They wrap their arm around her shoulder, and it feels nice, so she lets it be. “So, you’re sure you’re okay?”

    Jade doesn’t quite know how to answer that. She is as okay as she could be, knowing what she’s done. “Yes, I’m okay,” she responds after a minute of silence. They shift at her side, and she looks up, back to the sky.

    “Do you want me to talk?” they ask, and Jade nods, and so they do. About anything and everything. They talk until the new sun peaks over the new horizon, casting an orange glow over the planet they’d created. And then Davepetasprite squeezes her hand and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. It feels nice. She lets it be.

    They get up after that, and she watches them until they disappear, faint light vanishing into the town.

    Jade remains only another minute, eyes fixed on the sky. Then she stands, brushes off her tights and skirt, and takes in a deep breath. She shoves Davepetasprite and their words to the back of her head without a moment’s hesitation, remembering all at once how it felt to be weak and useless and how she can’t let that happen again.

    And then Jade Harley smiles, faintly, as well as she can, but only for a moment. There’s work to be done.


End file.
